Your Eyes Affect Your Swing Path

11 08 2009

Hitting a golf ball straight and solid is very difficult to do. Ken Griffey Jr., an all-star baseball player and seven handicap golfer, stated that golf was harder than baseball because you are not only worried about hitting the ball solidly, but also where it goes. He went on to say that he doesn’t care where the baseball goes after he hits it solidly. As golfers, we have to play our shots to right and left field even though we prefer to hit the ball to center field.

As you can see in the video, your eyes have a significant influence on both the solidity of the hit as well as the direction. I like to get my students to align themselves correctly and that means getting their feet, knees, hips, shoulders and eyes parallel to the target line. When observing a student from face on, I am looking for a stacked set up. You can think of your body as a set of building blocks. You want your feet to provide a nice foundation and then you want to get your knees, hips and shoulders to stack up as you move on up the chain. The last link is your eyes. If you can get your eyes level, it gives you the opportunity to swing with balance and on plane.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , ,
Categories : ball flight, full swing, game improvement, golf, golf instruction

Distance Control, the Key to Great Putting

31 07 2009

I think back to Ben Crenshaw’s 60 foot putt at the 10th hole at Augusta National when he won the Masters in 1984. He must have played 20 feet of break and poured it right in the heart. The distance control was absolutely amazing and doing it on that great stage made it even more memorable. The key to Ben’s prowess on the green was his ability to roll the ball the proper distance. If you think about it, every putt that breaks is a speed putt. The harder you hit it, the less it breaks and the softer you hit it, the more it breaks. In short, anything other than a straight putt, the line is governed by your speed. As I have said before live by the “DIE” rule, “Distance Is Everything”.

The only thought in your mind when you are over a putt should be distance control. You should spend most of your time looking at the target to get your mind oriented to the target. Your practice strokes should be made looking at the hole. Trust that your subconscious will help you roll it the proper speed. Butch Harmon once said that touring pros glare at the target and glance at the ball while the weekend golfer glares at the ball and glances at the target. Stare that target down with the steely gaze of Clint Eastwood when he says “Make my day!” If you do, you just might make your day and make a Crenshaw like putt in the process. -jz


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , ,
Categories : game improvement, golf, golf instruction, putting, short game

Great golf in the wind

19 07 2009

Let’s face it. Wind makes golf hard! In 1992, I was a rookie on the Asian Golf Tour. I flew over to the Philippines to enter my first event. I survived a Monday qualifying to get into the event and then went on to make the cut easily. I thought that there was nothing to this touring pro thing. The came the weekend and a ferocious 30-40 mph wind. I finished last of all the players to make the cut. The wind simply beat me. There’s a saying out on tour that when conditions are difficult, par goes up. Well my par went way up and both my weekend scores started with an 8 and you can’t survive as a touring professional with those numbers. A Chilean player named Roy MacKenzie was nice enough to take me to the driving range after my weekend debacle and teach me some tricks on how to deal with windy conditions. Through the years, I have added more tricks which I would like to share with you.

The first thing that Roy noticed was that I was trying to power the ball through the wind. That strategy does not work because the harder you hit it, the more backspin you put on the ball. Backspin spins the ball up into the oncoming wind and the ball balloons up into the air losing its distance. Roy and I spent time hitting smooth, slow 5 irons and I started to see a lower ball flight with less spin. The result was that the wind was not messing with my golf ball! There another saying on tour, “When it’s breezy, swing it easy”. Throw your ego out the door, take more club and swing easy. I have no problem swinging a smooth 5 iron from 120 yards. Greg Norman did it last year and almost became the oldest player to win a major.

Accuracy is always difficult when you are playing into a cross wind. The key to hitting it straight in these conditions is to always try to spin the ball into the cross wind. We call this holding the ball into the wind. If you are facing a left to right wind, play a right to left shot. The wind will counteract the spin and the ball will fly straight. Remember that as you spin the ball into the cross wind, the ball will lose some distance so adjust your club selection accordingly. Only experience will dictate how much you want to curve your ball into the cross wind in order to achieve a straight ball flight.

Hitting a ball downwind is a lot of fun because you can hit it so far. The challenge here is to control your distance and not hit it over the green. More double bogies are made from hitting it over the green than hitting it short. Obviously, you need to adjust your club selection as your ball will fly farther. Also, you want to go to a shorter club because the added loft will help you spin the ball better as downwind shots decrease the backspin on the ball. This may sound weird but sometimes, I will hit a low shot downwind because I can control the distance better than sending it up into the elements.

Lastly, I want to comment on putting. If you watch the European Tour players, they tend to have wide stances when they putt. Since they play in windier conditions, they have learned to widen their stance to stay balanced. I feel like my feet are rooted into the ground and I engage my core muscles to increase balance. It is crucial to stay steady as you putt in order to make the right contact. The wind will also affect your putts so plan your break with that in mind.

Remember, par goes up in the wind and the conditions are the same for everyone. Follow some of the before mentioned advice, and you will have fun the next time you face the wind. -jz


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , ,
Categories : ball flight, full swing, game improvement, golf, golf instruction, mental game

Your Wedge Game

3 07 2009

How important is your wedge game? Just ask Masters Champion Angel Cabrera. After hitting a tree on his second shot of the first extra playoff hole, he hit a wedge shot to about 6 feet and holed the putt to stay alive in the playoff. The rest as they say is history. The bottom line is that your wedges are important scoring clubs. They can help you birdie par 5’s and save pars on par 4’s when you cannot reach the green in two. Tom Kite made a great living on tour being a master with the wedge. In fact, he pioneered the three wedge system as he knew that wedging it the proper distance was the key to scoring.

Notice that barring a miss-hit or miss-alignment, you don’t hit your wedges off line. The misses tend to be short and long. Do you know how far you hit your wedges? Can you hit a 55 yard shot, a 68 yard shot, or a 91 yard shot? The tour players can. It’s not because they have super-human talent, it’s because they practice wedging the ball different distances. I want my students to be able to land their ball within 2 yards of their target so they have no more than a 6 foot putt left. This gives them a reasonable chance at getting it up and down. When I was a touring professional, I had 36 distances that I knew I could hit right on the number. I was excited when I had a wedge in to the hole as I knew exactly the swing that would get me near the hole. At that point, it was all about execution.

There a couple of very good methods to hitting wedges precise distances. One is to vary the length of your backswing. You can do this with several wedges to give you even more distances. This system made famous by Dave Pelz requires the player to maintain a consistent tempo.  Another system is to find a comfortable backswing position and accelerate through at different speeds to adjust your distance. Both are effective but require practice in order to achieve precise distance control. When you hear about a player having great touch with his wedge game, it means that he has great distance control. Cabrera had great touch on that wedge shot at Augusta National.

I have found that the best wedge players are the ones who trap the ball and bring the shot in on a lower trajectory with more spin. They de-loft their wedge which allows the ball to rebound off the face and produce more consistent distances. For those of you who may scoop the ball or add loft at impact, the ball tends to run up the face and lose it’s distance. Paul Azinger is a great example of a player who traps his wedges and has great distance control. Find your best way to control your wedge distances and lower scores will be right around the corner. -jz


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: ,
Categories : ball flight, full swing, game improvement, golf, golf instruction, pitch shot, short game

Get it up and Down from Greenside Rough

21 06 2009

When it comes to scoring, getting it up and down from difficult situations around the green is crucial. I grew up on a golf course that had a 9 hole par 3 course adjacent to it. All the holes were between 40 and 75 yards. I used to go there with my junior golf buddies and we had competitions all day long. We used to challenge each other and put our balls in ridiculously difficult lies and see who could get it up and down. And yes, there was money on the line.

These competitions helped me learn the valuable skill off assessing a lie and understanding what I could do with it. I learned this from the best teacher I know, trial and error. The shots I demonstrate in this video come from hours of trial and error. I had to learn quickly or my lunch money was on the line. I also liked to compete against the older kids so I needed to be sharp.

The two techniques I show in the video are actually very forgiving. When you use the bounce of the sand wedge, the club slides along the ground for about six inches so you can hit between two and four inches behind the ball and hit a great shot. The key is to hit enough of these to get the distance control down. Since you are sliding the club under the ball and using so much loft, you need to make a pretty fast swing to get the ball to go anywhere.

The second technique where you put the ball well back in the stance enables you to minimize the amount of grass that gets caught between the clubface and the ball. Remember to stick with a sand or lob wedge as well because you will be taking quite a bit of loft off the face with the ball back in your stance. Now that you have de-lofted your club, it does not take much swing to get the ball to go a long way. Remember to only choose this technique when you have plenty of green to work with.

Distance control is the key to short game. You now have two new techniques in your arsenal. Now trial and error will dictate how good you get. Don’t let them win your lunch money!


Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: , , , ,
Categories : chip shot, game improvement, golf, golf instruction, pitch shot, short game, video

Play My Golf version of Tic Tac Toe

1 06 2009

I remember being in a room with Chuck Hogan, a renowned mental guru, when he asked a group of accomplished college players the following question: “Who here is done with their golf swing?” As you may imagine, none of them raised their hand. He then followed up with a second question: “Who here knows when they will be done with their golf swing?” Again, nobody raised their hand. I recently came across a college player who is about to graduate and turn pro. He was so excited because he said that his golf swing was done and that all he was working on now was becoming a shot-maker. How cool is that!

As you can see by the video that accompanies this blog, I talk about the nine shots in golf when it comes to the full swing. There is a draw, a straight shot and a fade. And there is a low, medium and high trajectory of each. I had an opportunity to watch Tiger warm up for a Ryder Cup match and sure enough, he went through the nine shots. I call it playing Tic Tac Toe as the nine squares represent the nine golf shots.

For those of you who are accomplished players, ask your instructor for a shot-making lesson. I guarantee that you will become a better player. An instructor can help you make a swing change simply by teaching you how to hit a specific shot. Instead of bogging you down in mechanics, you can make a swing change by learning to shape a shot. I remember going to golf camp at the PGA junior academy and participating in fun competitions. One contest was trying to hit the ball under a bungee cord that was tied across two posts. I learned how to hit a low shot and nobody told me to put the ball back in my stance or to lean the shaft forward and bow my wrist. The picture of the shot made me do it or I was not going to win the contest.

Playing with your ball flight is not only fun but key to getting your game to the next level. And lets face it, once you learn how to play tic tac toe, you realize that it always ends in a tie if both players know what they are doing. But my golf version of Tic Tac Toe can help you win your match against your buddy. -jz


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: ,
Categories : ball flight, full swing, game improvement, golf, golf instruction, mental game, video

New instructional Video

15 05 2009

Check out my latest instructional video on golfdigest.com. -jz


Comments : Leave a Comment »

Categories : golf instruction

New Instruction article and video

8 05 2009

I have an instruction article in the June issue of Golf Digest which is out now. You can find it on pages 117-121. There will be an additional tip in the “tips plus” section which will be appearing soon. I also have a video on golfdigest.com at the following link: http://www.golfdigest.com/instruction/video/2009/04/zanderputtingtips

Enjoy your weekend. I hope you get out to play. -jz


Comments : Leave a Comment »

Categories : golf instruction

How to Hit It Low

3 05 2009

Ben Hogan was a master at ball-striking but also a master of golf course management. One of his strategies was to hit the ball low to a back pin. This way he could land the ball on the front third of the green and have the ball release to the back. If you have played enough golf, you know that missing a green long makes for a difficult up and down. Bringing the ball in low is a safer strategy. Learning the low shot will help you in many other ways as well. Low shots help you in when hitting into the wind, hitting under tree limbs, and playing links style golf which feature greens that enable the golfer to play a run-up shot.

As you can see in the video, there are many ways to hit the ball low. You can select a longer club and grip down, you can abbreviate your swing, you can swing easier, and you can play the ball back in your stance although that comes with consequences as you can see in the video. The one thing you may not hear much about is how hitting low shots helps many golfers find their swing mechanics. By making your swing more compact, you simplify your motion and get more predictable results. When you hear about touring professionals “tightening up” their swings, they are looking to make their motions more efficient and repetitive. After all, so much of great golf is being able to predict the outcome of your shot. Ben Hogan’s swing became better when he shortened it. Phil Mickelson is in the process of simplifying his swing and Tiger’s stinger speaks for itself. I have never seen Tiger miss a fairway when he hits the stinger. If he ever adds a stinger driver to his arsenal, you might see the first calendar year grand slam since Bobby Jones.

So add the low shot or your own personal stinger to your game. It will add a layer of sophistication to your game and enable you to be more creative in your shot-making. -jz


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , ,
Categories : ball flight, full swing, game improvement, golf, golf instruction, video

The role of your eyes in your golf swing

1 05 2009

Josh has a new video tip on swing alignment in the Video Showcase section of golfdigest.com.


Comments : Leave a Comment »

Categories : full swing, golf

« Previous Entries Next Entries »